Nigeria as an emerging democracy: Dilemma, promise

Text of the keynote address by Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Sokoto, Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah at the NBA Annual General Conference in Abuja

The minorities of the Middle Belt unfortunately or fortunately do not have the culturally homogenous and cohesive capacity to inflict injury on anyone. They did their part for one united Nigeria. So, truly, we are set for a new dawn. The challenge is how to bring that about.

5: Unity by Division: Balkanisation of the State.

Whatever may have been the circumstances of our union, our history is not different that of other nations which were forcefully created or manufactured. The real challenge is how and why we have not been able to imbibe for example, the E pluribus, Unum, philosophy that has gathered a complex web of humanity like the United States is, into one nation. Under this principle, the Americans admitted their differences but argued that although we are many and diverse, we can aspire to be one. The challenge is to find the institutions to support this unity. Today, the United States with all its difficulties is a fine testimony of how a nation with differences can find common cause by creating a time tested Constitution.

With hindsight, it is important for us to look back and appreciate why our difficulties have persisted. So far, it is not due to lack of good men and women, good will, good intentions, enthusiasm, even patriotism that Nigeria’s growth remains stunted. We have had our own fair share of good men behaving badly, but the problem is that we have relied on the dubious quest for good men and women rather than relying on creating institutions to support and make it possible for these humans to act rightly or to stop them from acting wrongly.

Faced with the challenges of nation building, Nigeria did not choose the path of statesmanship, courage and resilience. Rather than follow through the roundtable discussions in Aburi, Ghana in 1966, clarify the issues and seek accommodation, we resorted to states creation as a solution to the problem of national unity. After slicing the nation into states, we then began came up with the mantra that; to keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done! Even when we fought a war with no winners no vanquished, rather than return to the barracks and use politics to create consensus and rebuild our nation, the military stayed on, corrupted politics and destroyed the foundations of the unity it had preached and fought a war to protect. Thus the mantra, to keep Nigeria one was replaced with, To your tents o Israel!

Under the military, states and local government creation became such a selfish exercise that military officers simply parceled out the country to themselves and their friends as tribal fiefdoms. This diminished a sense of national unity as more and more communities invented new identities amidst cries of freedom from domination. Thus, at the creation of each new state or local government area, yesterday’s brothers and sisters who speak the same language and share the same culture became enemies. Location of state capitals and local government headquarters, the citing of projects intensified these animosities and yesterday’s majority which became a new minority, now demanded its own space. While the country did not grow, these policies only further created new elites with a bloated and unproductive bureaucratic and political elites feeding off the system at the expense of the people. Even right till today, the debate about a new Constitution is merely a fig leaf for seeking further balkanization of the nation as states creation seems to be the most important item on the table with every Senator seeking to deliver a new state to his or her people! For how long can we survive with this joke?

6: The politics of Land and Taxation:

From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, the issues of land reforms remain a major source of conflict and instability. From the colonial period, the appetite for choice lands dictated the options for settler or transitory colonialism. In places like Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa and Zimbabwe for example, land has been the main source of conflict. The stories of the Mau of Kenya right up to the Zimbabwean veterans are within the same context. Little wonder the founding fathers of Sierra Leone decided to award the Order of the Mosquito as a sign of appreciation to the anopheles mosquito whose malaria bite kept the white man away from taking over their land.

The issue of land remains a sore point in Nigeria. The conflict around indigene and settlers, land ownership laws and so on are still to be resolved. Closely tied to this is the question of taxation. The infamous Land Use Act of 1978 has thrown up problems that remain unresolved and since the political class have found this very beneficial, it is not surprising that the poor remain the victims of these unjust laws. Land Laws are fundamental to individual and community growth and development. It is even more so for government and investors. We should learn from the mistake of the Niger Delta and ensure appropriate legal measures that protect the investor, citizen and our country. It is one major way of engendering stability, harmony and growth. Every nation seeking development, growth and national cohesion must address the issues of land and taxation.

One of the surest signs that our country has not been serious about democracy and economic development has been the issue of taxation. As the old saying goes, no taxation without representation. If we believe this, then, the lack of effective tax laws is a measure of how disconnected the government is from the lives of the people and their economic endeavours. Sadly, perhaps, aware of how little its impact is in the lives of citizens, the government has seemingly been lackadaisical about enforcing the tax laws. Without services, a government has no moral basis to tax its citizens. Clearly, the example of what is happening in Lagos is a lesson and a metaphor for our country. Sadly, fighting a thoroughly corrupt, incompetent and inefficient bureaucracy should pose the biggest challenge.

The State as a Distribution agency:

Professor Richard Joseph’s old characterization of the Nigerian state as the arena of prebendalism still holds good, then as now. One of the most egregious areas of this assault is the privatisation of state power where state resources and their allocation are privatised within a tiny circle. Today, the culture of the state as a domain of patronage persists. The saddest part of this problem is that the military Constitution has actually built this anomaly into the Constitution.

Section 162 of the Constitution specifically states that: The Federation shall maintain a special account to be called the Federation Account into which shall be paid all revenues collected by the Government of the Federation. The official Head chef, known as the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, presides over the slicing of this beef of state. It is further recommended that the distribution of this largesse shall take into consideration…. population, equality of States, internal revenue generation, landmass, terrain as well as population density.

Subsections 3-8 continue with this iniquity which focuses on mere distribution of handouts with no clear mechanism for monitoring whether the allocations are properly used for the welfare of the people. We can understand why any census will always be contested and why communal crises over boundaries and new identities will persist in Nigeria. But what is even more invidious is the decision to tie local governments to apron strings of the state governors. It is now possible to appreciate why local government elections will remain at most a charade with the State Governors ensuring that chairmen are firmly under their control. As can be seen, there are hardly any states with more than a token presence of one or two local government chairmen or Women from the opposition Parties.

For a long time, the so-called Joint-Account was the area where governors proved to be even more reckless. The State Assemblies are almost all the same in terms of membership of the party in power. What these present us with is a seriously compromised political atmosphere where accountability and transparency are the first victims. The governors literally anoint the speakers of the Houses of Assembly. So, with both local government chairmen and speakers each struggling to be governor’s favourite sons, there is no one left to speak out on transparency and accountability. There are no mechanisms for holding government responsible. The occasional hiccups and theatrical attempts at impeachment are merely a symptom of the rumbling of a hungry stomach. This is why our democracy remains so weak at the lowest levels.

Leadership Recruitment and Capacity in Nigeria:

Elsewhere, in a paper I wrote for the Nigerian Leadership Initiative, I spoke on what I called, Power without Authority. My interest was to show that the leadership crisis in Nigeria persists because we do not as yet have criteria for ascent to leadership. From my analysis, it is clear that right from the first republic till date, every Nigerian President has literally come to power by good luck. More often than not, those who have prepared for office either by way of the quantum of resources accumulated, have never managed to make it. The result is that the country has not been able to develop a sound political culture.

The real test that a country’s democracy is deepening lies in some level of unpredictability about electoral outcomes and fortunes. Thus, the issue of who or which Party will win the elections and who might win or lose a Gubernatorial or Senate seat should not be based on predictable outcomes such as patronage, god-fatherism, capacity to manipulate electoral body, its agents and results, the size of the political war chest, the recruitment and control of well heeled legal gymnasts or anointing of any sort. The notion that a state should look up to whom the President or governor will anoint as a successor, institutionalises corruption, indolence and cronyism. It kills ideas and principles and makes political contest a violent enterprise. By now, politicians would have come to appreciate the fact that this so called anointing is a waste of time because even before the oil of anointing has dried up, the godfather and godson are already at war. This is the story of our anointed Governors right across the country and as we know, only a few have mended their fences! But these quarrels are taking their toll on our people as supporters are constantly forced to move wherever and whenever their patrons change direction.

Anyone familiar with the political history of Nigeria will appreciate the fact that somehow, when it comes to the Presidency of Nigeria, God’s rules of engagement for Nigeria are different. In the whole of our history, from Alhaji Tafawa Balewa till date, political power has always been a gift of charity from God. No one has become the President of Nigeria from the size of his war chest or connections. I am not sure whether this will remain our fate, but at least, if we are to take any lesson from all this, it is that we need to be more circumspect.

Those in power therefore should remember that God has not changed His place on His throne and stop playing God by spending resources, bending the rules and deciding that they must anoint or appoint their successors. I am not saying we should leave everything merely to chance, but that it is important that we appreciate the fact that in nurturing our democracy, there is need to instill peoples’ confidence in the process. So far, for us, elections have always been a war or sorts. Although we are quick to blame the ordinary people and thugs, the truth is that it is the political class that is responsible for criminalizing the process. The lack of internal democracy among the parties, refusal by those at the top to respect the rules of engagement and the Party guidelines, forcing anointed candidates leads to the manufacturing of consent. All these merely stunt our growth and leave the process open to violence and abuse.

We need to create the kind of space that can allow for people with ideas to persuade and influence public opinion to support their ideas. Although talent is important in any society, clearly, it is important that a nation creates institutions that can enable this talent to flourish. Richard Branson, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg are clearly extraordinarily gifted and talented men. But they would not have nurtured their dreams if they did not have an environment that was wide enough and had the institutions to support and contain their visions which may have seemed crazy at the early stages.

Mrs. Chioma Ajunwa was a natural talent, but it took the foresight of someone in the Police Force to rally around her and later, the vision of a Segun Odegbami to have nurtured that talent. Compare that with the situation today where we focus more on funding prayer warriors, sorcerers, magicians and some form of voodoo as the means for winning medals and other laurels in international competitions.

Godatherism and cronyism have destroyed and are destroying Nigeria. Today, it is almost impossible to convince any young man or woman that a first class degree can guarantee you a job anywhere including the areas in which you have excelled. Hardly a day passes that a young man does not send me a text to say, I have heard on good authority that they are recruiting at X and Y establishments, but, I am told it depends on whom you know. I initially dismissed these young people by telling them to go, sit for the examination/test and to pass before they come to me. They laughed at what they considered to be my innocence or ignorance, until I woke up to the situation.

Right now, we are faced with an uncertain future in which, some ten or so years ahead, we shall have a generation of young men and women running the bureaucracy or in public life who owe their future to a godfather, not a country that offered them a chance to excel. This is dangerous because what we are doing is investing in an unproductive system of clientelism which destroys excellence, stunts national cohesion and compromises our public ethos.

How can we have a country in which the future is being mortgaged on the altars of prebendalism and feudalism? How can the President preside over a country in which his children rely on others for their wellbeing and welfare? We are going to end up say, twenty years ahead when we shall have Ambassadors, Permanent Secretaries, Directors, Ministers, Governors and Presidents who came to prominence not by dint of hard work or the transparency of their environment but men and women who will be running a country that is not the primary basis of their allegiance. The reason is because they were pushed to a job with no qualifications other than that they came from a list presented by a man or woman with connections. In life, we have all been guided by others, but in our situation in Nigeria where public officers are openly engaged in the most non transparent ways of recruiting into public service, we face a future that is in mortal danger and a country that will be a mere shell with only such shallow symbols or flags to which command no respect. Are we therefore surprise that communities and states are creating distractions by hoisting their own flags? This is just the beginning of the mess that lies ahead.

Dispute Resolution Mechanisms:

The Nigerian environment is still largely hostile to such indicators for modernization and business as, rule of law, due process, transparency, contract enforcement etc. This is a legacy of our authoritarian background. For Nigeria to redefine its laws to be able to grow and attract investors, it must rethink the nature of the legal system it wishes to adopt. We have not paid much attention to the inherent problems in the legal system that we have adopted in Nigeria. For example, even as a layman, serving at the Oputa Panel opened my eyes to the great injury of the legal system that we have for a largely communal, poverty stricken society like ours. We watched as highly paid lawyers took the stage and turned the platform for articulating the grievance of ordinary victims of injustice and abuse into a legal gymnasium. It is time for us to wake up to what many people in the world already know; that conflicts and disputes can be resolved as if there is no tomorrow, they can be resolved in less hostile terms.

Rwanda provides Africa with the best test case. The country has become a model for reconciliation with a leadership that has focus and is prepared for sacrifices. Recently, a journalist asked a Rwandan if he expected Paul Kagame to go in 2017. The man replied: Yes, I hope so, and if he does, I will cry.

This is not the place to review the legacy of Mr. Kagame, but the man has become the cynosure of many eyes around the world and has shown that it is better to have talent and honesty than to have oil and dishonesty. Now, Nigerians are hovering around him as a model of leadership. I went to Kigali on a field research in 2004. In the course of my work, I sat through the Gacaca traditional courts which had been set up to resolve some of the issues that were pending in a country where over 200 thousand people were awaiting trial. In less than ten years, 12,000 Gacaca courts have disposed of 1. 2m cases at very minimal financial costs. The Gacaca courts have not replaced the conventional courts in the land, but what we have is evidence of a country that its leadership is determined to ensure justice through the adoption of some creative means that guarantees integrative and restorative justice.

Needed, a Constitution:

As usual, with eyes on 2015, the politicians are angling for the best strategy to position themselves for power. Ordinarily, there is nothing wrong with this. There are calls for the amendment of the Constitution while others are calling for a Sovereign National Conference. The general belief is that this is what we need to redress the injustice that is in the system.

How do we account for constitutional mortality? The American Constitution has survived for over two hundred years largely because it has focused on how to reduce the power of the sovereign. There have been three key concepts guiding Constitutions; amendment, suspension or replacement all aimed at guaranteeing Constitutional endurance, resilience or longevity.

The focus of all Constitutions must be to limit the power of government by ensuring that those who have power use it well and that those who do not have power are adequately protected so that they do not resort to unconstitutional means. This has been at the heart of the social crises in Nigeria. To the military, the Constitution was a distraction to their ambition to hold on to power. Thus, without one, the Nigerian Sovereign appropriated power to himself and the result is what we see today with the dictatorial and intolerant postures of public officers to principles of Constitutionalism, order and process.

Individual citizens usually have competing identities and interests that are based a variety of identities. These include ethnic, communal, religious, regional, class and so on. The duty of a Constitution is to serve as a vehicle for transferring the allegiance of these citizens from these narrow interests to the higher interests of the state. To do this, the state must, through the lofty ideals of the Constitution hold up a higher goal of protection, security, welfare and so on to the citizen. It must command his loyalty and respect.

The next challenge is to create the institutions that will align with the ideals encapsulated in the Constitution. These require maturation and the political elites must never be allowed to apply the principles of quick fixes to turn the constitution into a tool that merely accelerates their political climbing. Thus, there is need for courage, patience, disciple, maturity and statesmanship. Although there is a case to be made of the how a Constitution comes about, popular participation is not necessarily the litmus test. Some of the most enduring Constitution were crafted in smoke filled rooms by the elite, the result of disciplined bargaining and negotiation. There is clearly a causal relationship between constitutional longevity and political, economic and democratic growth of a nation.

Constitutions must be self-enforcing, they must possess and inherent equilibrium from which none can deviate without consequence. They must possess a quantum of incentives that are sufficiently appealing to all the constituent units and penalties that serve as disincentives to infringement. By way of judicial activism, some unforeseen aspects of the Constitution can be brought to the fore by judicial rulings by radical judges. Here, we recall the roles played by people like the late Gani Fawehinmi or the Bar under the leadership of the combative and assertive late Aka Bashorun. In the United States of America for example, such land mark judgments like Brown vs. Board of Education or the Civil Rights Act, are all evidence of what the Bar and the Bench can do if we are committed to judicial activism.

Constitutions must also include the whole issue of hidden information that is not available to all parties at the time of the framing of the Constitution.

Our Constitution must include the right to rebel and this must be clearly spelt out. Rebellion and public interest litigations help ordinary voices to serve as mechanism for restraint against the excesses of the state. Nigerians have often asked, can we have an Arab spring in Nigeria? The answer is not yet because so far, we are weighed down by petty allegiances and hiding behind little mole hills of ethnicity erected by our village and town crooks who continue to ensure that we do not see the big picture of our collective agony.

Summary and Conclusion: Where

I believe that we all agree with Professor Soludo in his vision of a Nigeria that is a dream waiting to happen. This is not the place for us to enter into a debate as to why this miracle has not happened. I believe most of us are familiar with the reason why this is so.

What is most disturbing is the fact that we have completely taken the intellectual contribution to politics out of our process. We are only concerned with how to capture raw power, how to get into the engine room, how to share in this life changing booty called oil money which is gradually looking like blood money in our country. We need to turn the corner and do so with confidence and assurance. I will make five quick points.

First, we need to fix the economy and I believe that we cannot do better than what we have now under the President and Dr. Ngozi Iweala. We hope that sooner than later, our economy will not only grow, but that we the people shall also grow. This is no easy task. According to the Vision 20-2020 report; The pillars of the Nigerian economy are extremely weak and the continued economic viability of the Nigerian state and the continued economic viability of the Nigerian state is perpetually at risk.

Of great concern is the need to create the leadership to support this vision. Although every government official has taken the transformation agenda as a mantra, it is important that this message percolates through the other crevices of our national life. This is why the idea of a performance bond is important. However, this performance should not be confused with sycophantic cooking up of figures and power point slides. There is need to clearly lay out the programmes to be measured. For a country that is used to monitors being compromised, the President must ensure that these measuring mechanisms are clearly explained to the people in a way and manner that they can understand. We will also require at least an annual review of the scorecard and this should go right down to the President. This show of good will in my view will go a long way in ensuring confidence in the system and process.

There has been the nagging issue of a Sovereign National Conference as a solution to our problems. Nigerians keep saying we need to talk as if we are not talking. The real challenge is the content of these talks and whether indeed, that is the way to solve our problems. It is important to note that we have never been short of talking points. Those who are calling for a Sovereign National Conference made up of representatives of the various ethnic groups must say whether this is different from what the late Anthony Enahoro and Professor Wole Soyinka worked on and they might also honestly tell us the fate of the final document.

I hold a slightly different view. First, I believe that we need to talk but the talking needs to be of a certain quality that is founded on scholarship and a proper understanding of the issues of statecraft. We also require a level of maturity and an understanding of these processes. It is clear that our problems are not documents but the issues relate to whether we can ever find the political will to focus on how to build our country and how to develop the required time lines and so on.

Everyone keeps talking about Leadership, Leadership and Leadership. We create the impression that somehow, leadership will simply drive an unwilling band of horses to a river and getting them to drink water by force. We believe that political leadership is the only form of leadership. We all ignore the challenges in our own leadership levels whether it is in the churches, mosques, civil society and professional groups. The curious thing is that what we all accuse the political leadership of exists in our own midst. If we borrow the example of the Fulani man and his herd of cattle, we get an interesting view of leadership. In that scenario, it is interesting to note that it is the cattle that actually lead, after all, the leader who leads them to the grazing field does not eat grass. It is they who eat grass, they know which grass has poison and so on. The shepherd only guides them and also ensures their security, but it is they who know what they want. So, there is need to close in the gap between our perceptions of leadership.

My view is that we must now address the issues of how justice can become a cardinal point of reference in governance. Here, I still insist that judicial activism is one way of interpreting the mind of the Constitution but also of extending the frontiers of justice. I use just two examples to illustrate the point I am making.

First, we have the famous story of Rosa Parks whose singular decision on December 1, 1955 not to leave her seat for a white man turned the course of the struggle of black people for freedom. This is one of the events that threw the Rev Martin Luther King into prominence. For, by December 3rd, the bus boycott which would change the tide of history had started.

Secondly, the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling in 1954 by the Supreme Court, struck down the policy of state segregated education. Other events such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 followed, but perhaps the case of James Meredith was more phenomenal. An ex air force veteran, he was denied entry into College in Mississippi. He took his case all the way to the Supreme Court whose ruling marked a turning point in the struggle against segregation. It took the courage of both President John Kennedy and his brother, Robert, the Attorney General to enforce the ruling. In the process, lives were lost, but on the day of the enforcement, some 2,500 people turned up to protest. The federal government had to send in some 20,000 troops along with 11,000 National Guards. He finally graduated amidst all the difficulties but his life changed the course of history.

Finally, the famous I Have a Dream speech contains some assumptions that we have often ignored. The speech was anchored on both the Emancipation Proclamation and the Constitution of the United States of America. What is significant here is the fact that the speech drew its inspiration and a sense of righteous indignation from these two historic documents and the reluctance of the leadership to live by its own laws. He spoke about a promissory note that these documents had promised ordinary Americans but which was not available to the black people. He continued: It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice….Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

From our own Constitution, the provisions of Chapter 2 on the Fundamental Directive Principles of State Policy, should be a basis for stirring up a sense of moral revulsion as to how and why a country so richly endowed could allow so much poverty to continue to exist. It is sad that all we have always said about this very important segment of the Constitution is that it is not justiciable. It is the duty of our lawyers to compel to Judiciary to breathe life into this very significant section of the Constitution. This is the challenge and I do hope and believe that the Bar and the Bench in collaboration can indeed, bring about the realization of our own promissory note. Thank you very much for your kind attention.